Story of the autonomous bee robot squad

The bee's collective work has helped the whole team work together in a close assignment. Worker bees who specialize in sucking pollen, raising and taking care of larvae, male bees are responsible for propagating, maintaining herds .

This way of life suggests that Harvard scientists Gu-Yeon and Robert Woo (USA) design and build robotic bees (called RoboBee) into one 'autonomous bee squadron', in which each child has the ability to perform specialized tasks assigned by the scientist.

RoboBee

It is thought that when deployed, this RoboBee team could completely complement the crowded natural bee army to carry out pollination for flowers to yield crops and orchards, which now due a mysterious cause that has not been found has killed 36% of bees in 2.4 million bee nests throughout the United States.

If an anatomy is carried, a robot bee will see:

The brains are simple circuits that perform complex functions that balance them in every position and fly from one flower to another. A microprocessor serves as a supreme function, such as processing data from incoming sensors.

Eyes include ultraviolet sensors that scan images of flowers. Digital cameras record objects below the bee to determine how fast it flies and how far it flies. Optical sensors track the sun to know if the bee flies south or north.

The wing is a transmission that controls two ultralight wings made of carbon fiber.

The antenna is a beam that catches waves of bees and acts like cat whiskers to avoid hitting another object.

The legs have 3 prongs for bees to attach to the landing station, charge the tiny fuel cell of nps and load the data recorded by the sensor to the computer. Legs are also responsible for bringing chalk from male flowers to pollinate female flowers.

The two scientists said RoboBee could fly around, parked on each flower like real bees, but since they were both electronics experts, they invited more biologists to be advisers, to help they created their "bee replica" with appropriate behavior and materials scientists to build tiny fuel cells that can be charged to power them. In addition, computer scientists are involved in writing software to coordinate activities for the whole herd. Thanks to these help, Wei and Wood have made microprocessors that can screen the data transmitted by sensors to serve as the brain for RoboBee uncles.

Last fall, the team received $ 10 million from the National Science Foundation for the project to build these robotic bees.

In five years, the team will have about a dozen 'artificial' bees that can fly around, know how to communicate information to communicate with each other and coordinate actions at the discretion of the owner.

Initially, these bees know to pollinate orchards, work relentlessly and are more diligent than real bees, which are seen as typical of hard work.

The team also said that if pollination for flowers is successful, RoboBee can be installed with other programs to check the pollution level of the environment in a large area and then transfer it to the center or search. survivors of accidents like earthquakes.

The coordination of multidisciplinary experts is considered the most important issue of the project.

Wood said: 'No one can succeed at this complicated task when working alone. We are all aware of that. '

"Autonomous bee squadron" pollinated flowers

Steps for RoboBee to pollinate a garden:

Step 1: Create a nest for bees

The farm owner makes a robot bee a nest. This is the 'headquarters' from which the RoboBee will emerge, being able to operate from garden to garden.

Step 2: Observe the landscape

RoboBee reconnaissance will leave the nest first, using ultraviolet sensors to figure out the pictures of the flowers that real worker bees still look for. The camera on the top of the reconnaissance bee records the markers at the bottom, to trace the way for the RoboBee to fly to do the task.

Step 3: Mapping

The reconnaissance bee returns to the Group to load the battery and transfers the location information to the Computer Center, to map the entire orchard. When all the reconnaissance bees transfer information, the Center will synthesize the map and send it to each member of the RoboBee honeycomb team to program their own activities, and so on.

Step 4: Pollinate

Worker bees equipped with sensors and larger battery packs for a long working session, according to the guide map to fly directly to the flowers, get chalk and spread to the stamen of the flower.